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Recovery

I’ve had several aborted posts but didn’t really feel like posting anything. I’ve been in a workout rut lately. I define myself as a runner, and I hate when I burn out on it, because what else am I going to do?

People have been recommending swimming. Okay. You guys, I am a horrible swimmer. I finally learned how to swim the summer I turned thirteen, where I was one of the oldest kids in my swim class. I had a huge fear of deep water, so I never learned how to dive properly. One time, my coach asked us to all jump in the water to save her as she pretended to drown. Everyone jumped into that pool except for me.

“Thanks, Jennifer,” she said.

My fear of deep water has never dissipated, but I didn’t let it stop me and eventually became a somewhat passable swimmer, in the sense that I can actually move laterally in a pool. But I am terrible. Like, the elderly people doing a casual lap in a pool will pass me up.

But swimming is out until my shoulder recovers (which my dad said will probably bother me for the rest of my life, so yay!). I’ve decided to get my exercise on the elliptical machine. It’s fun and not as mind-numbing as the treadmill is. A couple of days ago, I felt like my shoulder was going to pop out of its socket as I was exercising on it, so that was awesome.

I went for a walk yesterday. I tried running for five minutes but just didn’t want to do it. I was listening to The Colour and the Shape album as I walked. It’s an album I listened to constantly the last time I got out of a running rut, which was Spring 2010. When I got to “Monkey Wrench,” my body was like, “Why are we walking?”

I don’t know if it was just from habit, but I had to run while listening to this song. At the 3:10 mark, I started sprinting and felt wonderful.

Then the song stopped, and I stopped too.

It’s not much, but it’s a start.

Today I felt like my old self again because I actually got 8 hours of sleep. Why don’t I get 8 hours of sleep more often? It feels amazing.